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<p>How? two-fifths is 40%. This is not equal. I am not sure what happens to the other 15% by these numbers, maybe I am somehow misunderstanding.</p>
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<p>Ha ha alwaysamom, that’s the only chuckle I’ve had during this whole sad discussion. If you read my post again – please note that I was only asking questions. “Is this what we are saying?” type of thing.</p>
<p>Of course I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about career moms and SAHMs. I am also a working mother, and a student. My example of my van was only an example, not to veer into a jag about brands, makes and models of cars! Sorry if you missed my point – I’ll try to be more specific:</p>
<p>I have noticed repeatedly as a parent that there are parents – not a majority, a minority who seem to place their kids very low on the priority list. Why would I have anything to say about this at all? Because those of us who put our kids number one (virtually everybody on cc – crack for obsessive parents, lol) have been in the position of picking up the slack for parents like this. Schools, babysitters, afterschool programs, scout troops, other children’s homes take the place of quality time with parents for a lot of kids. I am not pointing to ‘career moms’ here! Parental priorities can include tennis games, trips to the mall, or in the case of one dad, mom was out of town and he dumped his kids off at my house because he wanted to ‘meet a friend’ – this was the first day of Hannukah, they were Jewish and we are not, but we sure made the latkes for all the kids, and had a great time! That dad missed out, in my opinion.</p>
<p>So – I don’t know. I apologize for any misunderstanding. I was asking questions to see if anyone had any insight about why we feel the need to see the mother punished. Were the circumstances part of a larger problem – one of priorities – or not?</p>
<p>While our arguments for prosecution for this woman may be strongly worded I believe it is due to our feelings for the poor baby and not out of lack of compassion for the mother.
I vote for prosecution because as others have stated if you replace the child with a neighbors child or an animal and I believe the woman would be prosecuted. You have the obligation to your child to keep her safe. Your grief and personal torture after the fact does not outweigh the fact that you were negligent in your care and it resulted in her death. I am not saying prison, throw the book at her. I am saying let a jury of her peers decide whether she is guilty.
I also agree with others who point to not making children a priority in their lives as a factor in these cases. I may be judging and finding myself superior to this woman, but I know deep in my heart that there was not a work day that went by for me that I didn’t think about my kids and call whoever was watching them. Even when it was my husband I called for an update. I may have been a part time nurse, but I was a full time mother.</p>
<p>anudduhmom, I apologize if I misinterpreted what you said. I did see that you were questioning but I also saw more than one reference to the cars that people drive and the implication, whether intentional or not, was that the inattentive parents all drive expensive cars while you picked up the slack in your old minivan. I acknowledge that it is sometimes difficult to detect tone and intent in the text that is posted on the forum but this was simply the text I was reading and that’s how it looked to me. </p>
<p>In any case, I do agree with you that there are varying levels of parental involvement and attentiveness. Any of us who has had others casually drop off their kids on a repeated basis at our homes while they go do other things knows that. Same deal with driving kids’ friends to and from soccer games every single week for an entire season while kids’ friends parents don’t even bother to show up to watch those games. Volunteering to go on field trips and attending special event nights at school, no reciprocal dinners at some friends’ houses, the list could go on and on. We all know parents like that!, but in 25 years of parenting and 4 Ds, I have yet to be able to pinpoint a correlation between this situation and income.</p>
<p>In trying to analyze a horrific situation like this, I do, indeed, have many questions going through my mind. I am a psychologist, after all. 
I wish that we could find a ‘cause’ for tragedies like this, pinpoint what went wrong and rewind so that we can prevent it from ever happening. It’s difficult to do that with accidental occurrences. This is usually because it’s a series of things happening, often unrelated, which lead up to the final event. Certainly there are things we can all do to remind others to be more careful and attentive, especially when it comes to caring for young children; we can talk to our own older kids about safety and babies, etc., as I think very few of us are likely to have toddlers still. I think the extensive coverage by the press of this case, and others like it, helps to contribute to the discussion. However, even the large amount of publicity over the past ten years of similar cases has not prevented them from continuing to occur, regardless of what ‘punishment’ is rendered.</p>
<p>As I said very early on in this thread, though, it’s unlikely that anything done to this poor mother would either serve as punishment or deterrence for anyone else. This wasn’t neglect or abuse as criminally defined. Her intent was not to leave this child alone for eight hours in a car, and therein lies the difference. Comparing this to physical or sexual child abuse or child neglect as it usually presents, is, in my opinion as someone else said, ludicrous. For those who ‘vote for’ prosecution of this woman, then I think I would ask, by extension, should every parent who ever suffers the death of a child through a motor vehicle accident where they are driving the vehicle, or who has a child drown in a backyard pool, or through a similar event, also be prosecuted?</p>
<p>Only where there is demonstated negligence. And yes, in my county parents are being prosecuted for the drowning death of a toddler. In this case there was a pattern of lack of adequate monitoring. I think prosecution is appropriate.</p>
<p>I always wonder if anyone would forget a bag containing $10M dollars in the car. A child is certainly more valuable than $10M but often not as well attended.</p>
<p>Negligence may be a type of abuse, but it is very different from beating your wife (the connotations that “wife abuse” has) or raping someone. It is a stupid, careless, and yes, often tragic thing to do, but it isn’t intentional, and that’s a key difference.</p>
<p>Isn’t there a simple mirror attachment that can be purchased that allows the driver to see the baby in the correctly placed rear carseat? I think it basically allows you to see the child with every glance up at the rear-view mirror. Maybe in light of these tragedies, this should be a required purchase, along with the car seat itself, just as self-locking gates and barriers are now required around swimming pools. </p>
<p>Or would this cause a lot of whining about a “nanny state?” </p>
<p>My opinion on the prosecution/compassion debate is that every case is different. The Irvine and St. Louis cases I would lean toward no prosecution; the Ohio case is a little different to me because there was a prior pattern of making this mistake of leaving the child in the car. Overall, I doubt that prosecution would create a deterrent ---- no one believes they would ever make such a horrendous mistake so it’s not something they take precautions for. If we ran public education ads that say: “Put the diaper bag on the front seat…don’t forget the baby!” We’d probably see ridicule and SNL skits and everybody saying “duhhh…!!!” And ignoring the advice because they don’t think it could ever happen to them. </p>
<p>Prosecution may not be the answer, but I understand CGM’s point. Compassion is there, but why shouldn’t outrage be expressed as well. There ought to be expressions of outrage and societal concern — on internet forums, on talk shows, and in front-page stories. It should not be easily forgotten and forgiven; it’s too reprehensible. There should be signs or something posted at day care places regarding these mirrors or keep reminders on the front seat.</p>
<p>I am being reasonable…if your day care person forgot your baby, that would just be a big ole mistake I guess</p>
<p>My point is this is happening because people don’t put their children first</p>
<p>THis isn’t about working, it is about the child being put at the bottom of the to-do list</p>
<p>Interesting when I look at the demographics of the parents who forget their childrn who died, the ages, the types of jobs, the incomes…these people are allowed to forget because of who they are</p>
<p>While others, who often had no choice, get jail</p>
<p>WHile others, who forgot because they were doing some other activity besides a fancy job, get 20 years</p>
<p>Interesting</p>
<p>IF this was some poor hispanic woman working at Wlamart who put their child in the car because their sitter bailed, wonder if you all would be so forgiving</p>
<p>But those “over worked” “tired” “stressed” upper class white folks who are incompetent are to be shown compassion</p>
<p>and I am uppermiddle class white folks</p>
<p>ahhh…but that is because the poor hispanic woman left her child in the car “intentionally”, while the stressed out upper class mom merely “forgot”.</p>
<p>Yes, I think there is a huge difference between intentionally leaving your child in a car all day and accidentally doing so.</p>
<p>I think PSAs on this subject would be a great idea. Buckling a purse or brief case strap into the carseat with the child might be helpful.</p>
<p>I’d like to see statistics on prosecution/slap on the hand and prison sentence/no prison sentence as it relates to race and income and even age of the mother to go along with blanket racial/socio-economic statements.</p>
<p>The problem with all these suggestions for reminders on taking the child out of the car is that people don’t INTEND to forget the child. Nobody thinks they are going to forget their baby. I didn’t write myself a note in the morning reminding myself to feed them either.</p>
<p>Once on a busy day, amid the chaos of organizing activities for three boys my husband and I started to back out of the driveway before we realized the six year old was in the house by himself. But it took LESS THAN A MINUTE before my brain started remembering where each kid was. I can’t imagine going all day.</p>
<p>Having said that though, I think this woman has suffered enough and nothing will be gained from punishing her any more. It won’t be a deterrent because nobody expects to do it and no further punishment is necessary. Even the fact that she had left the baby in the car before merely provides that much more anguish to her.</p>
<p>When one person unintentionally does something which has horrible consequences it makes sense to blame the individual. When many people do the exact same thing, despite the worst possible consequence most of us can imagine - the loss of a child - it’s foolish to simply blame the individuals involved. When lots of people do the same thing it’s not an individual error - it’s a problem with an external cause - and an external solution. </p>
<p>We recognize this with traffic issues. (And by the way, all of you congratulating yourselves on what perfect parents you are, how this could never have happened due to your superior parenting instincts and morals - can you swear that you’ve never violated a single traffic law with your child in the car? Never exceeded the speed limit? Never took your eyes off the road to look at your radio or NAV display? Never spoke on your cell phone while behind the wheel? Because any of those actions have a risk of death to your child - and they’re things you’ve done on purpose.) One thing you learn in municipal planning is that different street designs will produce different, and predictable, results. If you build a wide, multi-lane thoroughfare, and put up a 25 MPH speed limit sign, traffic will still move at 40 MPH - or more. When traffic levels reach a certain point, if you don’t install a stop sign or stop light, a predictable number of crashes will occur. In short: people in the aggregate act in predictable ways in given circumstances, regardless of what the “rules” are, and even if their very lives ar on the line.</p>
<p>Since we know that the number of children dying due to having been left in cars by absent-minded parents has grown significantly since we started putting kids in the back seat - there’s a problem there. It’s not that parents as a group have gotten worse, it’s because we have created a situation which (we should now, at least, recognize) will result in an unacceptable number of parents making that mistake, with tragic results. The situation needs to be addressed - not by sanctimonious maligning of the parents who have been the victims - yes, the victims - of predictable absent-mindedness, but by addressing the functional reason for the events.</p>
<p>Yes, an educational campaign to get people to put their diaper bag in the front seat, or their briefcase in the backseat, would be an excellent start. A mechanical device in the car which would sound an alarm if the door was closed with XX pounds in the car seat when the engine is off would be even better. I’m sure that more fertile minds than mine can come up with additional fail-safes. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that when you do 5 minutes of googling and come up with dozens of these cases, the rational response is not to say - “Oooh - bad, bad parents!” It’s to say “Why is this happening?” The “white hat - black hat” theory of society is almost always a bad explanation for the occurrence of tragic events when the events recur on a regular basis.</p>
<p>Victims OMG, they are not victims.
Even before airbags, kids were put in the back seat by many parents as this campaign for “safer in the back seat” started in the mid 80s shortly after I had my first child.
I can’t rule out that parents are getting worse, more self absorbed and “stressed”. It is a whole new generation of parents.
Predictable absentmindedness…I can’t believe you described forgetting your child with this phrase</p>
<p>Your emotional response to a child’s death aside, Keymom, when one person does it, you can blame the individual. When dozens (hundreds) do it, it’s “predictable.”</p>
<p>No, I don’t think parents are getting worse. I don’t think our generation was better, or that our parent’s generation were better still. People (in the aggregate) are people. It’s only the situations which change.</p>
<p>When my mom was growing up, once they packed up the car for a trip and drove away without one of the kids. They didn’t realize it until she was running after the car. So maybe there was some luck there, although she wasn’t a baby and surely wouldn’t have died even if it had been hours, since presumably she’d go to a neighbor’s house or feed herself. But the point is, it happened, somehow. My grandparents are not people who did not care about their children and my grandmother did not work. My paternal grandparents aren’t people who did not care about their children, and yet they did things that would be considered unwise today such as leaving my father outside while eating. It probably could have ended badly, and for other families, it probably did. Today we wouldn’t accept that. My father was literally my grandmother’s life and I can honestly say you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would sacrafice more for her family. </p>
<p>Generations have faced varying issues. No one is better or worse here. Deaths due to other things have declined with this generation of parents. </p>
<p>My own parents are slightly neurotic, but if we were asleep, my mother used to leave us in the garage (with the car off obviously). Our kitchen door opens to the garage. And she also took naps when we were young and sometimes we woke up before her. What could have happened? Probably a lot. But it didn’t, and thousands of parents do the same thing. Lightning will strike for someone. There is just no way to eliminate all risk from life. Humans are fallible.</p>
<p>The legal system does not rest upon whether or not we feel sorry for someone, whether or not punishing them more would serve any purpose or whether or not a lot of people commit the same act. If it did, very few people would be prosecuted. The above concerns reflect the provenance of psychologists, sociologists and theologians. </p>
<p>Punishment rarely does any good. However, it is the only crude tool we have to enforce the system of laws legislative bodies have enacted.</p>
<p>If this woman had other children in the future would you want her to be their caretaker?</p>
<p>The legal system as a mechanism to enforce laws independently of all the considerations listed. Like it or not, negligence IS a crime, and this woman should be prosecuted. If a jury agrees that mitigating circumstances explain her behavior, she will be found not guilty. If she is found guilty and a judge believes that circumstances mitigate her guilt her sentence will reflect this.</p>
<p>We can’t just say we feel for her so the law should be thrown out. Laws about child neglect and parental negligence are attempts to protect children. Again, they may be a crude instrument at this point, but their intent is to speak for the victim, who is this case is the child, not the parent, no matter how sorry we feel for her.</p>
<p><a href=“ohionewsnow.com”>http://www.ohionewsnow.com/?story=sites/ONN/content/pool/200709/568825803.html</a></p>
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<p>Apparently, not the case in Ohio. Elsewhere it might have been, but a one time incident/accident, versus a pattern of behavior won’t always involve a tough sentence - in cases like these, everything would be considered. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Ohio also has no law against unattended children in cars, so that wouldn’t have gone against her either.</p>
<p>I think the law there does need to change.</p>
<p>BTW, another thought -not making an excuse for her, but the raised seat backs and headrests (meant for safety) really do obstruct the view to the back seats in a car like Slaby’s. Tinted windows do, too.</p>
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I wouldn’t doubt that cell phones are a major distraction nowadays that could contribute to this problem. It’s proven that most people talking on a cell phone are ‘absorbed’ in their conversations and of course, we’ve all experienced this on the roads with people driving distractedly while on the phone. Combine this with the fact that a lot of women seem to be on the phone almost constantly including while parking, while getting out of the car, while picking up and dropping off kids, etc. It’s no excuse of course, but I’ll bet it’s at least a factor. There was a local case at my corner grocery the other day where a lady on a cell phone in the parking lot actually run over a man, was stopped by bystanders whill still on top of the man, and she never even realized she hit anyone (he survived albeit with broken bones). </p>
<p>That’s why I stated earlier - get off the cells and pay attention.</p>